In one of the most famous events in the Bible, G-d commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son. So Abraham took his son Isaac, bound him on an altar and prepared to bring him up as a burnt offering. And then the voice of the angel called to him and told him not to harm his son.
G-d did not want human sacrifices. The peace process does.
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After the handshake with Arafat in the Rose Garden led to a wave of terrorist attacks, Prime Minister Rabin invented a new sacrifice to describe the dead Israelis murdered by the Muslim terrorists who had been permitted to enter Israel, to form armies, to train openly and to kill openly. Korbanot Shalom. Sacrifices of peace.
In Ancient Israel, in the Tabernacle and the Temple, the Korban Shelamim, the Peace Offering, was brought as a celebratory offering to be eaten by all. In the modern State of Israel, the Korbanot Shalom were brought by the families of the dead who often had little more than a few scraps of skin tissue, a finger or a hand caught in a crack in the sidewalk to remember their children by.
In the old Israel, only the pagan worshipers of Moloch, the abominable cult that placed its own sons and daughters into the idol's flames, practiced human sacrifice. In the new Israel that was ushered in on that glorious day in the Rose Garden under the beaming gaze of Bill Clinton, everyone in the land was expected to be prepared to offer up their children to the Moloch of peace, the idol of the Palestinian Authority, its altar engraved with Nobel Peace Prizes, its service overseen by the international diplomats and domestic pacifists who had appointed themselves its Priests of Peace.
Peace made the service of death into a national duty. There was no telling where or when one might be called upon by Israel's peace partners in Ramallah to become a sacrifice for peace. It might be at a mall or at a pizzeria or while riding the bus. An Israeli could become a sacrifice for peace at any time. And the Labor Party leaders would bow their heads solemnly over his grave, like the biblical elders were obligated to do over every murder victim in their vicinity. But unlike the elders, they could not recite the ceremonial verse, "Our hands did not shed this blood."
Eventually Prime Minister Rabin, who had offered up so many Israelis as sacrifices of peace, was privileged to himself became a sacrifice of peace. His ascension is commemorated annually and has long since made its way into the Israeli curriculum as an example of the dedication to peacemaking that is expected of the true visionary of peace.
The sacrifices of peace have diminished as the left has fallen out of power. The wooden altars of the Moloch of Peace stand empty and the Priests of Peace pass mournfully through international airports, studying maps, drawing up plans and calling for new sacrifices. And eventually their call is heeded.
In the spring, America's prince of peace, the man who had thrown thousands of American soldiers with their hands tied behind their backs into the arms of the Taliban, who had sacrificed every other American ally in the region, came to Jerusalem to demand that the altars once again be raised up and the blood of peace flow over the negotiating tables.
"It can be tempting to put aside the frustrations and sacrifices that come with the pursuit of peace," Obama told a carefully selected audience of Israeli students. Some of them future sacrifices on his bloody altar of peace. "Here on Earth we must bear our responsibilities in an imperfect world. That means accepting our measure of sacrifice and struggle."
And so the measure of sacrifice comes again. The ceremonial release of terrorists with blood on their hands commenced this festival of negotiations. Some of the freed terrorists had been notoriously talented sacrificers; claiming the lives of women and children. And in reward for their service, the Moloch of Peace smiled upon them and commanded that they be set free.
Netanyahu, who replaced Olmert who was put on trial, who replaced Sharon who fell into a coma, who replaced Barak, who fell out of favor, who replaced Netanyahu the first time around, bowed to the inevitable. And to his credit, he did it reluctantly.
That is how conservative governments in Israel can be distinguished from liberal governments. The liberals eagerly rush forward to bring human sacrifices on the altar of peace and will not stop no matter how many angels cry from heaven telling them to stay the knife. But the conservatives do so reluctantly, they offer excuses, they stall for time, they give courageous speeches, they beat their chests a little, and then sighing wearily, they shoulder the burden of the Galut Yid and build up the pagan altars of peace in sight of the ruined heap of the temple and the graves of their fathers.
Netanyahu, we are told, did his best. Like the most dedicated of the ghetto leaders during the Holocaust, he stalled for time, he gave out false lists, he tried to distract the important foreigners swaggering through his ghetto, hoping that they wouldn't see the children, wouldn't start thinking about how those children might look splayed across an altar of peace with their throats cut and a bloody worthless peace agreement in their mouths.
But then when he was cornered, he bowed to necessity. Was he a Rumkowski, hallucinating that he could save the Jews of Lodz through peaceful Nazi collaboration, or a Kastner, playing the game to save a majority and then maybe a minority and then leaving with a few trains of important people with the death screams of the half-a-million Jews of Hungary whom he lied to and betrayed for their own good ringing in his ears.
Perhaps when all the peace processes are done, then the Labor Party, Kastner's party, will rescue a few planeloads of important people from the burning ruins of Israel and mark that as the success of their peace efforts.
If you wish to understand, pause and listen for a moment to Chaim Rumkowski as he delivers the infamous speech to the Jews of the Lodz Ghetto that will one day be known as the "Give Me Your Children" speech.
"The ghetto has been struck a hard blow. They demand what is most dear to it - children and old people. I was not privileged to have a child of my own and therefore devoted my best years to children," Rumkowski, the former orphanage director turned head of the Lodz Ghetto Judenraat, says, wiping his forehead.
"I lived and breathed together with children. I never imagined that my own hands would be forced to make this sacrifice on the altar. In my old age I am forced to stretch out my hands and to beg: Brothers and sisters, give them to me! Fathers and mothers, give me your children!"
"Yesterday, in the course of the day," Rumkowski tells the assembled Jews, who only thought that they had lived through hell at that point, "I was given the order to send away more than 20,000 Jews from the ghetto, and if I did not – 'we will do it ourselves'."
And it is this phrase. This "we will do it ourselves" that is the true name of the moloch of peace. Hear the rationalizations now from Rumkowski's lips on September 4, 1942, addressing men and women who are doomed to death. Hear it from the lips of Netanyahu and his associates. Hear it from the conservative rationalizers who warn that if Israel does not give up its children on the altar of peace, Obama and the European Union and all the rest will do it themselves.
"The question arose: 'Should we have accepted this and carried it out ourselves, or left it to others?' But as we were guided not by the thought: "how many will be lost?" but "how many can be saved?" we arrived at the conclusion – those closest to me at work, that is, and myself – that however difficult it was going to be, we must take upon ourselves the carrying out of this decree," Rumkowski said, transforming his collaboration in the murder of thousands of children into an act of personal courage.
"I must carry out this difficult and bloody operation, I must cut off limbs in order to save the body!"
Israel has chopped off quite a few limbs already. But there are more to be chopped off. And the question is not how many will die, how many will be thrown out of their homes, but how many can be saved. That diplomatic triage is the bloody rationale of peace.
Rabin warned that if Israel did not accept an autonomous territory, then it would be forced to accept a state. Peres warned that if Israel did not accept a state in Gaza and the West Bank, it would lose Jerusalem. Sharon warned that if Israel didn't accept the expulsion of the Jews of Gaza, it would lose everything up to the '67 borders. Olmert warned that if Israel didn't accept the partition of Jerusalem, it would lose the entire city.
Israel accepted most of these things and each of the terrible losses it sought to avert came about anyway, not naturally, but because of these prior concessions. The autonomous territory paved the way for a state. The loss of Gaza and the West Bank made Jerusalem next on the schedule.
And now, the Priests of Peace warn that if Israel doesn't accept a deal that will be based on the '67 borders and partition Jerusalem, it will be forced to accept a one-state solution that will destroy the country.
Or as Obama put it, "Given the demographics west of the Jordan River, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine." Another way of putting it, a more honest way, is give me what I want or you will be destroyed.
A fool could see what the next step is, but the Priests of Peace do not allow the wise men of Chelm into their meetings. The Rumkowskis and the Kastners do not want any distractions in their diplomatic operating rooms while they are performing surgery on the Jewish State.
Like Rumkowski, a series of Israeli Prime Ministers arrived at the conclusion that they would have to take a stiff drink and then take upon themselves the task of carrying out the decree. The surgeries have yet to lead to a healthy Israel vigorously limping along while waving to the State of Palestine across the way, which has its missing limb. But the Priests of Peace promise that with enough rites, enough incense, enough smoke, enough children carved up and their entrails examined for promising signs of peace, the day will come.
Take a walk back to the Lodz Ghetto in September and listen.
"I tried everything I knew to get the bitter sentence cancelled," Rumkowski tells the crowd. "When it could not be cancelled, I tried to lessen the sentence. Only yesterday I ordered the registration of nine-year-old children. I wanted to save at least one year – children from nine to ten. But they would not yield. I succeeded in one thing – to save the children over ten. Let that be our consolation in our great sorrow."
There are our leaders who return from Nazi HQ or the Wye Plantation to inform their people that at least they saved the ten-year-olds. All it took was a willingness to give up the children under the age of ten. They saved the larger settlements, they tell us. They saved Jerusalem. They saved Israel. They saved something. And all they had to do to get it was to give up everything.
When Rumkowski declared, "I must carry out this difficult and bloody operation", he stopped being one of the ghetto Jews and became, for a little while, a Nazi. A triage of this sort is the death of the soul. When you take it upon yourself to decide which of your own people should die at the hands of the enemy for the greater good, you take on the murderer's perspective. You begin to think like the enemy.
When Israeli leaders sit down to the territorial triage of diplomacy and begin contemplating which Israelis should be thrown out of their homes, which parts of Israel to surrender and how many dead are acceptable for the sake of peace, then they begin to think like the international diplomats and cease to think like Israelis.
They allow the enemy into themselves and wrapping themselves in Rumkowskian nobility, they become callous to the suffering that they cause. What Rumkowski, what Netanyahu and so many others have forgotten is that when you begin deciding how many Jews should die, you become a Nazi.
There was no angel to stop Rumkowski from sacrificing thousands of children for the greater good, for it was not an angel he was listening to, but the Nazi officers leading him along to the abyss with the promise that an ever diminishing minority could be saved if he got everyone to go along.
Of the more than 200,000 Jews to enter the Lodz ghetto, there were less than a thousand left in the end. Thousands more managed to survive in the concentration camps to which they had been sent. Rumkowski was beaten to death by other Jews in Auschwitz. Kastner, who had become an official in the Israeli Labor Party that would one day perpetrate the peace process, was shot to death.
Now the altars rise again and the ever-diminishing amount of territory that will be saved is matched by the ever-increasing amount of sacrifices for peace that will be tolerated. In the last exchange of fire, rockets struck major Israeli cities that had not been bombed in decades. The terrorists have made the rocket into their altar and the suicide bomber into their sacrifice and Israelis make the negotiating table into an altar and the victims of terrorism into their sacrifice.
We know what comes next, but we choose not to know it. Just as they chose not to know it. It is easier that way. Either the sacrifices for peace will stop or Israel will become another Lodz Ghetto whose frightened overlords go on believing that they can stay alive if they strike the right deal, if they delay enough, if they give up the nine-year-olds to save the ten-year-olds from the altar of peace.
Step back now to August 2005 and watch as another man speaks. This man is no Rumkowski. No cringing ghetto-dweller. He is a famous general and the Prime Minister of the State of Israel and he is speaking to the nation.
"This step is very difficult for me personally. It was with a heavy heart that the Government of Israel made the decision regarding Disengagement, and the Knesset did not lightly approve it," the old man who is barely six months away from the stroke that will put him into a coma says.
"The responsibility for the future of Israel rests on my shoulders. I initiated the Plan because I concluded that this action is vital for Israel. Believe me, the extent of pain that I feel at this act is equal only to the measure of resolved recognition that it was something that had to be done."
And there is the supreme joke. There is the shriveled voice of Rumkowski coming out of the mouth of Ariel Sharon. There is the echo of the cold Polish autumn of 1942 in the hot Israeli summer of 2005. Like Rumkowski, Sharon took responsibility for the problem. He felt the pain, but something had to be done.
And there it is again in his Knesset speech on the Disengagement that will ethnically cleanse the Jews of Gaza and turn over the territory to Hamas.
"It is clear to me that within the political vacuum which will be created if the "Roadmap" collapses, and Israel will not succeed in presenting its own alternative, dozens of political initiatives will be drawn up often, from all over the world."
Six decades later, Jewish existence was still being negotiated on the same terms. If we did not do something, they will.
We had to present an alternative to cutting off an arm and a leg, by limiting the damage to only a few fingers. We had to give up the nine-year-olds to save the ten-year-olds. There is Prime Minister Rumkowski presiding over the Lodz Ghetto of Israel. There is the peace process is all its sordid glory. There is the altar and there is the patriotism of cutting away a few limbs, turning over a few thousand children, in the hopes that the rest may live.
And the true horror of it is that the Rumkowskis are the decent ones. They believe that they are doing what they must. There is no way to compare them to the Abraham Gancwajchis or the Yossi Beilins, the Peace Now's or the Group 13's that do not do what they do for the vanishing prospect of a greater good, but believe that their crimes are the greater good. They are not the worst of us. They are the best of the worst of us. They sacrifice us, but they do it reluctantly. They wish there was a better way.
Meanwhile the altars are built and wait for their victims. The voice of Moloch is heard in the land and the booming cry from its mouth is "Peace". Fathers and mothers take their sons and daughters to the metal maw while singing songs of peace. It has been this way for decades now. Human sacrifice has come to be accepted as the noble thing to do.
G-d does not call them and no angel directs them. They listen to their leaders and their leaders sit at meetings with foreign diplomats who draw up plans and charts. And as they sit there at the mahogany altars where toasts are made and papers are pushed around, they scramble for a compromise, another in a long fatal line of compromises, how much must be given up, how many must die, so that the rest must live.
This long train of sacrifices has taken the PLO from a relic in Cyprus to a mortgage on the West Bank, Gaza and part of Jerusalem. And now another bout of sacrifices begins. Murderers are set free, victims are forgotten and the blood begins to flow. There is no peace, but there are sacrifices for peace. And one day, if this goes on, a nation will have been sacrificed for the peace of the altar in a new Shoah.
A million Isaacs lie on the altar and no voice calls out to stay the knife, the sacrifice of peace that G-d did not command, is made again and again. The blood flows over the altars of peace and it is never enough. Not so long as one Isaac still lives.
G-d did not want human sacrifices. The peace process does.
.jpg)
After the handshake with Arafat in the Rose Garden led to a wave of terrorist attacks, Prime Minister Rabin invented a new sacrifice to describe the dead Israelis murdered by the Muslim terrorists who had been permitted to enter Israel, to form armies, to train openly and to kill openly. Korbanot Shalom. Sacrifices of peace.In Ancient Israel, in the Tabernacle and the Temple, the Korban Shelamim, the Peace Offering, was brought as a celebratory offering to be eaten by all. In the modern State of Israel, the Korbanot Shalom were brought by the families of the dead who often had little more than a few scraps of skin tissue, a finger or a hand caught in a crack in the sidewalk to remember their children by.
In the old Israel, only the pagan worshipers of Moloch, the abominable cult that placed its own sons and daughters into the idol's flames, practiced human sacrifice. In the new Israel that was ushered in on that glorious day in the Rose Garden under the beaming gaze of Bill Clinton, everyone in the land was expected to be prepared to offer up their children to the Moloch of peace, the idol of the Palestinian Authority, its altar engraved with Nobel Peace Prizes, its service overseen by the international diplomats and domestic pacifists who had appointed themselves its Priests of Peace.
Peace made the service of death into a national duty. There was no telling where or when one might be called upon by Israel's peace partners in Ramallah to become a sacrifice for peace. It might be at a mall or at a pizzeria or while riding the bus. An Israeli could become a sacrifice for peace at any time. And the Labor Party leaders would bow their heads solemnly over his grave, like the biblical elders were obligated to do over every murder victim in their vicinity. But unlike the elders, they could not recite the ceremonial verse, "Our hands did not shed this blood."
Eventually Prime Minister Rabin, who had offered up so many Israelis as sacrifices of peace, was privileged to himself became a sacrifice of peace. His ascension is commemorated annually and has long since made its way into the Israeli curriculum as an example of the dedication to peacemaking that is expected of the true visionary of peace.
The sacrifices of peace have diminished as the left has fallen out of power. The wooden altars of the Moloch of Peace stand empty and the Priests of Peace pass mournfully through international airports, studying maps, drawing up plans and calling for new sacrifices. And eventually their call is heeded.
In the spring, America's prince of peace, the man who had thrown thousands of American soldiers with their hands tied behind their backs into the arms of the Taliban, who had sacrificed every other American ally in the region, came to Jerusalem to demand that the altars once again be raised up and the blood of peace flow over the negotiating tables.
"It can be tempting to put aside the frustrations and sacrifices that come with the pursuit of peace," Obama told a carefully selected audience of Israeli students. Some of them future sacrifices on his bloody altar of peace. "Here on Earth we must bear our responsibilities in an imperfect world. That means accepting our measure of sacrifice and struggle."
And so the measure of sacrifice comes again. The ceremonial release of terrorists with blood on their hands commenced this festival of negotiations. Some of the freed terrorists had been notoriously talented sacrificers; claiming the lives of women and children. And in reward for their service, the Moloch of Peace smiled upon them and commanded that they be set free.
Netanyahu, who replaced Olmert who was put on trial, who replaced Sharon who fell into a coma, who replaced Barak, who fell out of favor, who replaced Netanyahu the first time around, bowed to the inevitable. And to his credit, he did it reluctantly.
Netanyahu, we are told, did his best. Like the most dedicated of the ghetto leaders during the Holocaust, he stalled for time, he gave out false lists, he tried to distract the important foreigners swaggering through his ghetto, hoping that they wouldn't see the children, wouldn't start thinking about how those children might look splayed across an altar of peace with their throats cut and a bloody worthless peace agreement in their mouths.
But then when he was cornered, he bowed to necessity. Was he a Rumkowski, hallucinating that he could save the Jews of Lodz through peaceful Nazi collaboration, or a Kastner, playing the game to save a majority and then maybe a minority and then leaving with a few trains of important people with the death screams of the half-a-million Jews of Hungary whom he lied to and betrayed for their own good ringing in his ears.
Perhaps when all the peace processes are done, then the Labor Party, Kastner's party, will rescue a few planeloads of important people from the burning ruins of Israel and mark that as the success of their peace efforts.
If you wish to understand, pause and listen for a moment to Chaim Rumkowski as he delivers the infamous speech to the Jews of the Lodz Ghetto that will one day be known as the "Give Me Your Children" speech.
"The ghetto has been struck a hard blow. They demand what is most dear to it - children and old people. I was not privileged to have a child of my own and therefore devoted my best years to children," Rumkowski, the former orphanage director turned head of the Lodz Ghetto Judenraat, says, wiping his forehead.
"I lived and breathed together with children. I never imagined that my own hands would be forced to make this sacrifice on the altar. In my old age I am forced to stretch out my hands and to beg: Brothers and sisters, give them to me! Fathers and mothers, give me your children!"
"Yesterday, in the course of the day," Rumkowski tells the assembled Jews, who only thought that they had lived through hell at that point, "I was given the order to send away more than 20,000 Jews from the ghetto, and if I did not – 'we will do it ourselves'."
And it is this phrase. This "we will do it ourselves" that is the true name of the moloch of peace. Hear the rationalizations now from Rumkowski's lips on September 4, 1942, addressing men and women who are doomed to death. Hear it from the lips of Netanyahu and his associates. Hear it from the conservative rationalizers who warn that if Israel does not give up its children on the altar of peace, Obama and the European Union and all the rest will do it themselves.
"The question arose: 'Should we have accepted this and carried it out ourselves, or left it to others?' But as we were guided not by the thought: "how many will be lost?" but "how many can be saved?" we arrived at the conclusion – those closest to me at work, that is, and myself – that however difficult it was going to be, we must take upon ourselves the carrying out of this decree," Rumkowski said, transforming his collaboration in the murder of thousands of children into an act of personal courage."I must carry out this difficult and bloody operation, I must cut off limbs in order to save the body!"
Israel has chopped off quite a few limbs already. But there are more to be chopped off. And the question is not how many will die, how many will be thrown out of their homes, but how many can be saved. That diplomatic triage is the bloody rationale of peace.
Rabin warned that if Israel did not accept an autonomous territory, then it would be forced to accept a state. Peres warned that if Israel did not accept a state in Gaza and the West Bank, it would lose Jerusalem. Sharon warned that if Israel didn't accept the expulsion of the Jews of Gaza, it would lose everything up to the '67 borders. Olmert warned that if Israel didn't accept the partition of Jerusalem, it would lose the entire city.
Israel accepted most of these things and each of the terrible losses it sought to avert came about anyway, not naturally, but because of these prior concessions. The autonomous territory paved the way for a state. The loss of Gaza and the West Bank made Jerusalem next on the schedule.
And now, the Priests of Peace warn that if Israel doesn't accept a deal that will be based on the '67 borders and partition Jerusalem, it will be forced to accept a one-state solution that will destroy the country.
Or as Obama put it, "Given the demographics west of the Jordan River, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine." Another way of putting it, a more honest way, is give me what I want or you will be destroyed.
A fool could see what the next step is, but the Priests of Peace do not allow the wise men of Chelm into their meetings. The Rumkowskis and the Kastners do not want any distractions in their diplomatic operating rooms while they are performing surgery on the Jewish State.
Like Rumkowski, a series of Israeli Prime Ministers arrived at the conclusion that they would have to take a stiff drink and then take upon themselves the task of carrying out the decree. The surgeries have yet to lead to a healthy Israel vigorously limping along while waving to the State of Palestine across the way, which has its missing limb. But the Priests of Peace promise that with enough rites, enough incense, enough smoke, enough children carved up and their entrails examined for promising signs of peace, the day will come.
Take a walk back to the Lodz Ghetto in September and listen.
"I tried everything I knew to get the bitter sentence cancelled," Rumkowski tells the crowd. "When it could not be cancelled, I tried to lessen the sentence. Only yesterday I ordered the registration of nine-year-old children. I wanted to save at least one year – children from nine to ten. But they would not yield. I succeeded in one thing – to save the children over ten. Let that be our consolation in our great sorrow."
There are our leaders who return from Nazi HQ or the Wye Plantation to inform their people that at least they saved the ten-year-olds. All it took was a willingness to give up the children under the age of ten. They saved the larger settlements, they tell us. They saved Jerusalem. They saved Israel. They saved something. And all they had to do to get it was to give up everything.
When Israeli leaders sit down to the territorial triage of diplomacy and begin contemplating which Israelis should be thrown out of their homes, which parts of Israel to surrender and how many dead are acceptable for the sake of peace, then they begin to think like the international diplomats and cease to think like Israelis.
They allow the enemy into themselves and wrapping themselves in Rumkowskian nobility, they become callous to the suffering that they cause. What Rumkowski, what Netanyahu and so many others have forgotten is that when you begin deciding how many Jews should die, you become a Nazi.
There was no angel to stop Rumkowski from sacrificing thousands of children for the greater good, for it was not an angel he was listening to, but the Nazi officers leading him along to the abyss with the promise that an ever diminishing minority could be saved if he got everyone to go along.
Of the more than 200,000 Jews to enter the Lodz ghetto, there were less than a thousand left in the end. Thousands more managed to survive in the concentration camps to which they had been sent. Rumkowski was beaten to death by other Jews in Auschwitz. Kastner, who had become an official in the Israeli Labor Party that would one day perpetrate the peace process, was shot to death.
Now the altars rise again and the ever-diminishing amount of territory that will be saved is matched by the ever-increasing amount of sacrifices for peace that will be tolerated. In the last exchange of fire, rockets struck major Israeli cities that had not been bombed in decades. The terrorists have made the rocket into their altar and the suicide bomber into their sacrifice and Israelis make the negotiating table into an altar and the victims of terrorism into their sacrifice.
We know what comes next, but we choose not to know it. Just as they chose not to know it. It is easier that way. Either the sacrifices for peace will stop or Israel will become another Lodz Ghetto whose frightened overlords go on believing that they can stay alive if they strike the right deal, if they delay enough, if they give up the nine-year-olds to save the ten-year-olds from the altar of peace.
Step back now to August 2005 and watch as another man speaks. This man is no Rumkowski. No cringing ghetto-dweller. He is a famous general and the Prime Minister of the State of Israel and he is speaking to the nation.
"This step is very difficult for me personally. It was with a heavy heart that the Government of Israel made the decision regarding Disengagement, and the Knesset did not lightly approve it," the old man who is barely six months away from the stroke that will put him into a coma says."The responsibility for the future of Israel rests on my shoulders. I initiated the Plan because I concluded that this action is vital for Israel. Believe me, the extent of pain that I feel at this act is equal only to the measure of resolved recognition that it was something that had to be done."
And there is the supreme joke. There is the shriveled voice of Rumkowski coming out of the mouth of Ariel Sharon. There is the echo of the cold Polish autumn of 1942 in the hot Israeli summer of 2005. Like Rumkowski, Sharon took responsibility for the problem. He felt the pain, but something had to be done.
And there it is again in his Knesset speech on the Disengagement that will ethnically cleanse the Jews of Gaza and turn over the territory to Hamas.
"It is clear to me that within the political vacuum which will be created if the "Roadmap" collapses, and Israel will not succeed in presenting its own alternative, dozens of political initiatives will be drawn up often, from all over the world."
Six decades later, Jewish existence was still being negotiated on the same terms. If we did not do something, they will.
We had to present an alternative to cutting off an arm and a leg, by limiting the damage to only a few fingers. We had to give up the nine-year-olds to save the ten-year-olds. There is Prime Minister Rumkowski presiding over the Lodz Ghetto of Israel. There is the peace process is all its sordid glory. There is the altar and there is the patriotism of cutting away a few limbs, turning over a few thousand children, in the hopes that the rest may live.
And the true horror of it is that the Rumkowskis are the decent ones. They believe that they are doing what they must. There is no way to compare them to the Abraham Gancwajchis or the Yossi Beilins, the Peace Now's or the Group 13's that do not do what they do for the vanishing prospect of a greater good, but believe that their crimes are the greater good. They are not the worst of us. They are the best of the worst of us. They sacrifice us, but they do it reluctantly. They wish there was a better way.
Meanwhile the altars are built and wait for their victims. The voice of Moloch is heard in the land and the booming cry from its mouth is "Peace". Fathers and mothers take their sons and daughters to the metal maw while singing songs of peace. It has been this way for decades now. Human sacrifice has come to be accepted as the noble thing to do.
G-d does not call them and no angel directs them. They listen to their leaders and their leaders sit at meetings with foreign diplomats who draw up plans and charts. And as they sit there at the mahogany altars where toasts are made and papers are pushed around, they scramble for a compromise, another in a long fatal line of compromises, how much must be given up, how many must die, so that the rest must live.
This long train of sacrifices has taken the PLO from a relic in Cyprus to a mortgage on the West Bank, Gaza and part of Jerusalem. And now another bout of sacrifices begins. Murderers are set free, victims are forgotten and the blood begins to flow. There is no peace, but there are sacrifices for peace. And one day, if this goes on, a nation will have been sacrificed for the peace of the altar in a new Shoah.A million Isaacs lie on the altar and no voice calls out to stay the knife, the sacrifice of peace that G-d did not command, is made again and again. The blood flows over the altars of peace and it is never enough. Not so long as one Isaac still lives.
Comments
I am speechless.
ReplyDeleteOh my G-D ... and I say that with sincere reverence to Him. This is the most amazing piece I have ever read regarding this ongoing battle and the unending gut wrenching crimes against Israel. Daniel Greenfield, thank you for sharing your gift in a way that brings something even deeper and more essential than knowledge alone.
ReplyDeleteAn excellent article as always.
ReplyDeleteThe sad truth is we Jews have been poisoned by the galut. Only a small fraction has the mindset for self-defense or any sense of Jewish destiny. We should remember that the vast majority of Jews may have disliked the British, but were all too happy to collaborate with Albion before independence.
Only a radical change, the restoration of the Davidic Monarchy has any hope of the Jewish people behaving with pride and in our own interests.
Putting words to something I have felt since I can remember.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
swartz
Simply great! Thank you Daniel! Woe unto those who forget the lessons G-d has taught us in His word!
ReplyDeleteThis is the most important and powerful piece I have seen written about the 'peace process'. The analogy with the Lodz ghetto 'negotiations' and Rumkowski (especially Sharon's quotes) are stunning. Let's hope at least one person who has any real influence will read this piece.
ReplyDeleteI only read the first paragraph so far (while the printer clunked out a hard copy, I am one of those dinosaurs who needs the hard copy - at least of quality writing). But I comment now, because, although I read nearly everything of you, I mostly don't follow up my intention to comment - so let me embarrass you: You are one of the very very best writers around - and you mostly articulate so brilliantly what I think, and I'm not even Jewish.
ReplyDeleteThe famous Bible story you mention reminded me of the genesis of my personal rebellion: it came on hearing for the first time the suggestion by Jesus to "tend the other cheek".
That went sooooooooooooooooooo against every fibre in me - even as a child - that I thought Jesus got that one wrong - and I still think so. Look what happened to him - and the same will happen to the Jewish people as soon as they are running out of cheeks!
http://littlenotesfromparis.blogspot.com.au/search?q=suicide
And now, it being bed time in Australia, it's off to bed with me and the thrilling anticipation of reading your "Sacrifices of Peace".
Classic
ReplyDeleteIf any student ever asks their parent or teacher why they should have to study "boring" history, point them to Daniel Greenfield's essay "Sacrifices of Peace".
Israel is just another in a long line of countries in what I call the "Rhodesian Parade".
ReplyDeleteFirst Rhodesia, then South Africa, then Israel, and after Israel some of the countries of Europe itself will be next, but which, Sweden? Norway? England?
But first was Rhodesia, like Israel, a prosperous civilized outpost of Western Civilization on a very troubled continent.
I know, Rhodesia wasn't really first, but it was one of the first, and one of the most high profile and iconic examples of how the totalitarian Left is picking off countries one by one.
And I say the Left because you may think that the problem facing Israel is the Palestinians or the Arabs or Muslims or Islam, but these are all just tools.
Islam, in all of it's evil shapeshifting incarnations and disguises is a tool of the Left.
And the Left accomplished their destruction, not by frontal assault, which they've tried against Israel many time, but by first infiltrating the major powers, not taking them over, but by having enough influence to get the major power to "pressure" the smaller country into surrender.
As Britain pressured Rhodesia to surrender, so today the US pressures Israel to surrender, and for the same reason, because it's been infiltrated by traitors at the very highest levels of government, media, education...
And just as Britain itself is now next on the menu, eventually the US will be served up to destruction.
Unless...
Every child knows what is going on with Israel.
ReplyDeleteIt's the story of Johnny pulling sister Susie's pigtails.
When Susie screams, Daddy yells at both of them to behave, not because he cares who's right or wrong and want's to stop Johnny from tormenting his sister, but because he's irritated and doesn't want to be disturbed.
As Johnny's provocations escalate, Daddy eventually gives up on talking to Johnny because he knows that Johnny is incorrigible, but if Susie continues to scream he punishes her and tells her to stay away from her brother because he knows that she is amenable to pressure and that will bring him some peace and quiet - for a while.
It is ironic that the UK which destroyed Rhodesia has reached its own Rhodesian Parade
ReplyDeleteEdgar, who knows. I doubt that will happen, but sometimes ideas are carried along in the current indirectly
ReplyDeleteSwarz, thank you
ReplyDeleteKahaneLoyalist, sadly this predates the Galut
Mr. Greenfield,
ReplyDeleteThank you for another amazing piece. I deeply respect your obvious personal pain as you contemplate, and write of, this history.
I hesitate to comment on this as I am not Jewish but I would to say, in Romkowski's defense, that he certainly knew of the death camps and of the einsatzgruppen. He knew that the German ghetto administrators had immediate and total life and death power over the ghetto and would not hesitate in the slightest to kill everyone there, as indeed was their intention.
But what is Netanyahu's defense?
As he faces the likes of Obama, Hilary Clinton, John Kerry and Tony Blair, why does he kneel to their agenda? He knows they are all sellouts, Saudi and Qatari funded whores. They can do nothing to the Jewish people beyond causing some minor inconvenience.
The problem I see is that the Jewish leadership is at the moment incapable of overcoming their rationality, they find it almost impossible to believe and truly understand that they are the subject of totally irrational religious hatred. No concessions can ever overcome this. The only answer for Israel is to "give war a chance". Victory in war depends on two things: 1. You must control the ground over which the war was fought, and 2. You must change the enemy's mind about attacking you.
Israel has had no problem achieving the first condition but has never achieved the second, this has to change, and it has to change by causing so much pain to the Arabs that they concede victory to Israel. The problem is that in order to achieve this, Israelis must embrace insanity, because total war is by definition insane.
Can the Jewish people do this?
If they cannot, then they are finished.
The naked truth!
ReplyDeleteDaniel, thank you. Israel's problem is having to live in the world, a world which no longer accepts evil. How nice if Israel could only be responsible for herself, and not have to rely on "allies" and "friends". Politics affects and infects to many things. I never would have believed Bibi capable of this prisoner release. but in recent days I've read columns from people who have been his suporters, like Caroline Glick, excoriating him for this, for giving in to Obama pressure. I don't know where this will all wind up, but I do know that Jewish sacrifice remains in the world, from the Fatah and Hamas charters, to all the radical muslims, to the "west". This year Psalm 27 takes on even more meaning, but who among the world's people, among Israel's leadership, will act?
ReplyDeleteDaniel, You have given the perfect description of the utterly EVIL, profoundly satanic Sacrifices of Peace. Everyone responsible for this terrible evil will stand before Almighty G-d one day, and TREMBLE.
ReplyDeleteLong ago, our Western leaders abandoned all morals and all ethics. Wicked Western ruling elites abandoned Western civilization.
Daniel: Another dark, penetrating and brutally honest look at reality. I think many Jewish people are perpetually hoping that the world will finally see the light and start acting rationally and doing the right thing with respect to Israel and the Jews. Many Jews cannot believe the level of irrational hatred which motivates much of the world when it comes to dealing with Israel or the Jews. Facts do not matter. Justice does not matter. Right and wrong is irrelevant. Sacrificing Israel is a fools errand because "the Jews are the canary in the coal mine" of civilization. The hatred of Israel and Jews ultimately and equally consumes those who tried to sit neutrally on the sidelines and the active haters.
ReplyDeleteIn the 40s there was not too much that the nations of the world could do for the Jews, aside from giving them sanctuary, since the Jews were mostly under the control of the Germans. But the allied nations could still have done something to help, except that they all, including the US and the UK, preferred to do nothing, and let the Jews be exterminated.
ReplyDeleteToday we have a different situation. The UK is essentially controlled by muslims, and can do little. The US is a different story. It is anti-Israel and pro-muslim because of the preference of its president and of all his choices for his government, and although obama is doing all he can to destroy America’s premier position, it still exists.
The choices today are between the forcing American government and the forced Israeli government. The Israelis do have the option (probably their best choice) of doing what is best for Israel and telling the Americans to fly a kite. The most satisfying choice, to shoot obama, accomplishes nothing, since all we would get in place of obama is biden. And of course the government is so loaded with muslims and muslim sympathizers that nothing would change. The only choice, therefore, is to tell the US and its allies to leave us alone to work out our own problems. This may result in a period of difficulty, but in the long run, it’s for the best.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/170682
ReplyDeleteThank you Daniel for this great article. Reminding us of Abraham, Isaac and the lesson that G-d does not want human sacrifice is vital for the survival of Israel and western civilization.
ReplyDeleteI am sick to death of Israeli leaders caving into demands for sacrifice. To hear prominent Jewish leaders here in the USA rationalize, approve and even applaud Israeli sacrifice is galling. Many of them encourage Obama to place more demands on Israel.
Of course this is also happening now to all western countries. We are being told to give in to the demands of Islam and other tyrannies. How did western civilization decide that submission is peace and self defense is wrong? How can sacrificing innocent people bring peace? The very idea is evil!
Sultank, you are correct that the Jewish tendency to surrender is a very old problem. But at least before the exile you would have extended periods of rational behavior. Now Jews looking out for their own interests is almost unheard of.
ReplyDeleteHave now read it: WOW ! Every word of this brilliant piece of truth should be tattooed on the inside of the eyelids of Israel's Left so that they cannot escape looking at the reality of their situation any longer.
ReplyDelete@ roger in florida
Your comment: = as harsh as it is fair.
The only answer for Israel is to "give war a chance"
^^^ this will go into my quotes folder
Ah, Daniel Greenfield, I am moved to tears.
ReplyDelete- BarbaCat
Plutarch wrote in De Superstitiones 171:
ReplyDelete... but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums took the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people.
A stunning indictment of appeasement.
ReplyDelete"Given the demographics west of the Jordan River, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine." Barack Obama
"Another way of putting it, a more honest way, is give me what I want or you will be destroyed." Daniel Greenfield.
Exactly. Netanyahu's perception (and perhaps the great majority of Israelis?) is that Israel cannot survive without American support and, that provides Obama the leverage to enforce these conditions upon Netanyahu. That is the crux of the matter.
I ask you once again Daniel, do you believe that Israel can survive without American support?
If yes, then there is no other answer but Netanyahu's incremental sacrifice of the children.
Would it be mad to suspect that Obama wants Israel for his Muslim Brotherhoodies?
ReplyDeleteYou have become the prophet Jeremiah of the 21st century by this article.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely stunning in the depth of it's truth.
This article is too important to just get lost in the ether of the internet. We must all make an effort to print it out and distribute it. Save the link and spread it around. Remember it's content and sound bites for use in discussions. This is a matter of great urgency.
ReplyDeleteThis article just makes me sad. If only Israel could tell the idiot liberals of the West to go to hell. One of my life goals is to get the Arabs out of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.
ReplyDeleteElliot said: This article is too important to just get lost in the ether of the internet. I tweet Daniel's articles over and over, and I email his articles to all who care. This one is stunning.
ReplyDelete- BarbaCat
Things that cannot go on forever eventually end.
ReplyDeleteThis will not end pleasantly.
More than ten years ago, I wrote an article to which was attached a list of 300 rabidly anti-Israel/anti- Jewish groups whose names contained the words "peace," "justice," "human rights," etc. (Pro-'Palestinian' Equals Anti-Israeli www.Masada2000.org/Peace-Groups.html)
ReplyDeleteAs this article shows so well is how it is our elected officials who do exactly the same horrible acts destroying Israel piece by piece all in the name of "peace!"
Historical accounts of the Maccabees shows that one of the main reasons they were successful was that they would kill the Jews that collaborated with Occupying Assyrian mercanaries. Maybe we shpuld be more like the Maccabees?
ReplyDeleteA elderly friend (84 and socialist from the old school where its main aim was to educate the working class) whom I had sent the article, did like it, even though he noted that in his opinion no war brought a solution to a conflict, with WWII exception, but justly noted that you forgot to mention the Sadat - Begin peace, with Israel forfeiting the entire Sinai, which did not cost Israel sacrificed children for the last 30 years.
ReplyDeleteSinai wasn't a core part of Israel for reasons of population and location and for that matter history
ReplyDeletethough the price for giving it up is likely about to grow a lot more serious with the changes in Egypt
An absolutely stunning article. This will be going in my personal archives. Thank you so much for all of your writings.
ReplyDeleteIsaac was bound on the altar of peace by Shimon Peres and he holds the knife. When he is gathered to his fathers, the knife will fall from his hand. The Angel who had hitherto prevented him from dropping the knife, will catch it and cut the cords binding Isaac. Then his son Jacob, re-named Israel, after he wrestled with the Angel and prevailed, will again wrestle with the Angel and prevail, take the knife into his own hands and restore his namesake Israel to its rightful place as a proud and independent nation.
ReplyDeleteI have just been reading " Antisemitism And Jewish Survival " by David Turner. All the other nations have survived on a steady diet of Jew hatred for two thousand years and more, they are incurable. Not one will stand by Israel.
The best article I have ever read on the so called "peace process." Muslims are the bane of the earth. "Peace" with them, what a joke. Go back to the 67 border, divide Jerusalem, give over Samaria and Judea? Mass insanity! Tell Lurch and Obama to stuff it.
ReplyDeleteStunning doesn't even begin to describe it.
ReplyDeleteI also get the distinct impression that this 'lesson' doesn't apply exclusively to Jews.
What sacrifices do we make, did we make, or worse, are willing to make, on the Altar of Peace?
http://littlenotesfromparis.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/israel-give-war-chance.html
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeletevladtepes2 said... "It's the story of Johnny pulling sister Susie's pigtails... Daddy eventually gives up on talking to Johnny because he knows that Johnny is incorrigible, but if Susie continues to scream he punishes her and tells her to stay away from her brother because he knows that she is amenable to pressure..."
To change the analogy slightly: Brother wants Sister's toys. Brother yells and screams. Sister said, "It's OK, Daddy, he can play with them. I don't mind." Politicians are fundamentally shrewd: they don't pursue the impossible. The Arabs say 'Nyet'; the Jews say 'Of course we'll compromise.' Guess who the politicos will dump on. And once they've identified the patsy in the group, they automatically keep pushing on him for concessions to be able to claim progress in negotiations. Let Israel say 'no' and mean it, they'll pick up their marbles and go find another patsy somewhere else. To put it in physical terms: water flows down into cracks; it doesn't go uphill.
Bernice Lipkin
editor@think-israel.org
As sad as this story is, and as real as it is, the comments above and of the authors fail to point out a number of facts.
ReplyDelete1. The kapos were chosen by the Germans, whereas Netanyahu (Sharon, Barak, Rabin etc) was chosen by the Jews. The Rumkowskis were told to hand over thousands of Jews or they would be killed and replaced. Netanyahu is being told, make peace or we destroy Israel by international boycott. You can no longer import or export, your borders are closed. Now go starve yourselves to death.
2. Unless the Jews in Israel understand that they must have a clear red line in which they are willing to go to battle, just as the Maccabees did, then they are just as bad as their leaders. Serving God is about being willing to die for your beliefs. No, not being murdered for your beliefs, but fighting your enemies to the death even if it means dying in the process. As with the Maccabees, sometimes your enemy is your brother. This is the lesson Pinchas taught us as well. If Netanyahu were to feel that releasing terrorists would spark a civil war, he would not release them. If Sharon had felt that the disengagement would have created a civil war, he too would have made other decisions. This is the test God has given us. The 2000 year old galut takes time to overcome. We are still in survival mode not attack mode. It is us, including Daniel Greenfield who are the Rumkowskis, because we do nothing to stop the bloodshed, instead we try to protect our own skin and that of our families. We watch as villages are torn up, communities evacuated, cemeteries dug up, and we watch hoping it will not come to us.
You speak to the living soul of the Jewish people and you go to the heart of the issues with conviction, strength and truth. Would that our leaders reflect the wisdom of your words in their actions!
ReplyDeleteThis must be presented in every fair-minded tabloid around the world!
ReplyDelete621 likes??? How about 6 million plus, likes!!
Truly amazinh! Thank you. Thank you!
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